social justice movement terminology for interpreters and translators - because more bilingual movements are stronger movements!

Saturday, March 8, 2008

so-called

so-called: mal llamado

As in, the so-called Justice and Peace law in Colombia, es decir, el mal llamado ley de Justicia y Paz. More and more Colombian human rights activists are insisting on just calling it Law 975, since even saying "mal llamado" you still end up associating it with justice and peace.

But there is all sorts of brave work being done for real peace here. There was a truly inspiring march in Bogota (and others around the world) on March 6th called by the Movimiento de victimas de crimenes de estado. I went a little crazy taking pics. Here is one of my faves.

hmm. this is another example of how dictionaries often don't speak to a social justice context. that may be what American Heritage says, but if you really consider the last two samples given of online usage - wouldn't they sound weird in English with "so-callled"? because they're not really questioning calling it the ronda Uruguay, they're just saying that it's called that. so again, I think that just using llamado has a different connotation that saying mal llamado.

well, what I hear people saying is mal llamado, not tal llamado. mal llamado has dramatically higher googlage - and when you google tal llamado none of the hits in the first few pages fit this usage, so I doubt that it's widely used to mean this.

subscribe in a reader

some of my best posts

decolonizing solidarity

My other bloglooks at colonial patterns in international solidarity and ways that we might change them, and talks about my research on international accompaniment and how it uses difference and privilege to make space for peace. The latest entries are listed below.